By: Mark Bogart 
My name is Mark Bogart. I am 17 years old and I live in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Starting at about the age of 12, I started to experience one hardship after another, ranging from my parents getting divorced to my grandparents dying. This was when I first started to experience depression, though back then I wasn’t quite sure what it was that I was feeling. Soon after, I started having problems with my dad. We would get in a fight almost every time we were around each other. After the fights started to become physical, I chose to stop living with him and went to live with my mom. I soon realized I had only traded one evil for another. Added onto all of this, one of my best friends was killed in a car accident. This became too much to handle. I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating, I found it hard to do anything at all. I went to multiple therapists and had multiple psychological evaluations which only led to me being heavily medicated for depression, insomnia and for being bipolar. But my problems didn’t go away. One day when I was about 15, my friend introduced me to marijuana. Finally, an escape. Not only did it make me feel happier than I could ever remember feeling, but it also helped me sleep and it definitely gave me back my appetite. I had found the perfect medicine to cure what ailed me. I am now seventeen and I have been smoking marijuana regularly for the past couple years. I had always been told by my parents and by the media about how bad drugs are and how bad marijuana in general is. Nowadays when I hear this, all I can think about is how ignorant most of these people are to it. How can you tell me how bad what I do is, when you have never even done it? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in drug dealing and recreational use of the drug. But I do believe that it serves as a very useful medicine. I believe this not only because it is medically proven but because I know through experience that marijuana has helped me more than any prescription medicine I have ever used. Marijuana had done nothing but good for me until about three weeks ago when I was arrested for possession with intent to distribute. I was not distributing nor had I ever been distributing. But because of the amount of marijuana I had on me, that is what they charged me with. I had about a half ounce on me which, for me, is maybe two days worth of marijuana (Most people would probably think that this is an obscene amount but not all of this is smoked, I also use some of the marijuana to make hash to ingest the marijuana as food). Being arrested changed my entire life for the worst. I spent two days in jail (with a large black man named Diesel who like to eat my bologna sandwiches and drink my juice boxes) before I was able to get out on bail. I am now facing possible expulsion from my school. Because of this, I have been without any marijuana for the three weeks since. Over those three weeks I have truly realized what marijuana did to help me deal with my mental ailments. I have gone back to constant unhappiness and spending night after night without sleep. I am on probation for the next year and I am drug tested every two weeks. So it looks like I am going to be without my marijuana for a long time. But that does not mean that I am going to change my opinion of it. Not only have I been telling my story to people who have the same view of it as I do but I have also spent plenty of time emailing my senator and actively pursuing the legalization of medical marijuana. I believe with all of my heart that there is no reason for it not to be legal. And I will continue to do whatever I can to support this cause.
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I have my own , unbiassed incredibly personal exposure to using marijuana, and regardless how often times everyday people exclaim “it’s effective for this” and “really good with regard to that”, I can tell people that it nearly destroyed my life man! Look, I realize that there are people who can simply up and quit, however there are numerous other people who definitely have the hardest time wanting to stop smoking marijuana. The root trouble with being addicted to weed is usually that the habit is usually a psychological one, not really physical.